UPM Raflatac continues to live up to its promise of labeling a smarter future by ensuring sustainability will soon come as standard

Metsä Board, the leading European producer of premium fresh fibre paperboards and part of Metsä Group, has had its emissions reduction targets approved by the Science Based Targets initiative as being consistent with the levels required to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement. The targets, covering greenhouse gas emissions from Metsä Board’s operations (Scopes 1 and 2), are in line with reductions required to limit global warming to 1.5°C. Metsä Board has committed to reduce by 100% its absolute Scope 1 and 2 GHG emissions by 2030 from a 2016 base year. Scope 1 covers greenhouse gas emissions caused by the company’s own production and Scope 2 refers to purchased energy. Metsä Board’s target for reducing the emissions from its value chain (Scope 3) also meet the SBTi’s criteria for ambitious value chain goals and are thus in line with current best practices. Metsä Board commits that 70% of its non-fibre suppliers and downstream transportation suppliers by spend will set science based targets by 2024.

The main changes are proposed in the following areas: Improving the stakeholder engagement during the international consultation: This could for example be achieved through webinars to introduce the applicant system before the consultation begins. Aligning the endorsement process with the national standard setting process: In line with developments in Working Group 3 on standard setting, the endorsement process should reflect the national process. The endorsement validity should take into account that a national review/revision process will start five years after the national approval of a standard. Streamlining the assessment of already endorsed systems: Endorsed systems will be reviewed at national level after five years. If this review leads to a revision of a limited number of requirements, the international assessment should only focus on those changes. This approach would recognize the previous assessment results of the unchanged requirements. click Read More below for additional detail

Cost Cutting Cloaked in Greenwashing - - Even if it were true that the pharmaceutical industry could “save 11 million trees a year,” by switching from paper to electronic prescription information for doctors and pharmacists, such claims of environmental superiority are meaningless, if not deceptive, because they do not consider the vast and growing environmental footprint of digital communications. The environmental impact of digital communication is often underestimated because of the “invisible” nature of the infrastructure that supports it. Nowhere does your article mention the environmentally invasive mining and drilling required to extract finite raw materials (iron, copper, rare earths, petroleum for plastics, etc.) necessary to manufacture electronic devices and the massive server farms that support them, the predominance of greenhouse-gas emitting fossil fuel energy used to power them, the massive amounts of water consumed to cool data centers, and that only 15% of U.S. electronic waste gets recycled. Compare this to paper, which is in fact is one of the few products on earth that has a truly sustainable, circular life cycle. U.S. manufactured paper is made from an infinitely renewable resource - trees that are purpose-grown, harvested and regrown in sustainably managed forests – in a process that uses a lot of water but consumes very little of it, and is powered mostly (64% on average) by renewable bioenergy. And with a recovery rate of 68%, paper is recycled more than any other material in the U.S. municipal solid waste stream. Using unsubstantiated and misleading environmental claims as a means to a digital-only end is greenwashing that completely ignores the documented environmental impacts of digital communication and threatens the livelihoods of millions of workers across the U.S. print, paper and forest products value chain.